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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22997140">in which they fell in love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate13kane/pseuds/kate13kane'>kate13kane</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:02:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>532</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22997140</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate13kane/pseuds/kate13kane</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>a winter soldier au (or not, depending on how you saw the movie)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in which they fell in love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>comments? please?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They dance around each other for far too long. Maybe for the sake of their friendship, the friendship that hardly existed before the attraction did. </p>
<p>They become friends despite their feelings, because those two are nothing if not stubborn.</p>
<p>When they do acknowledge what had been there for far too long, it isn’t to anyone but themselves.</p>
<p>He realizes he loves her first. The exact moment he realizes it, well, that can’t be pinpointed. It could have been her grace and cool head during the many crises they face. Maybe when it first strikes him just how beautiful she is. But it was probably the moment that they’re deep in a mall together, on the run, and she’s thinking up a cover on the spot. She chooses to say they’re engaged. He realizes he likes the idea, realizes he wants to be the one that she loves.</p>
<p>She realizes it shortly after he does, but loves him no less than he does her. Unlike him, she knows when it happens. It isn’t anything to do with how gorgeous, or how kind, affectionate and selfless he is. It definitely has nothing to do with the way she saw him smile and blush at the cover that she made up in the mall. She realized what she wants to be to him when she asks what he wants her to be. He looks at her, something hidden behind his eyes and she waits. Say it, her brain urges him. Say it, say girlfriend, lover, wife, friends with benefits, anything.</p>
<p>Of course, he’s too respectful of her to say exactly the thing that they both want. He asks for a friend, and she’s disappointed but was trained too well to let it show. He turns back toward the road, face hardening back into that of a battle worn soldier. She knows he lied, but puts her feet up on the dash and says nothing.</p>
<p>Then, in true Avenger fashion, they go and get themselves nearly blown up.</p>
<p>He stands in Sam’s bathroom, in a dirtied, torn tank top and sweatpants, while she towels her hair off wearing nearly the same thing. She doesn’t remember much of the conversation, only knows that she had confessed something personal, which she would probably regret, (she never did) and he was compassionate in way that made her fall in love even more. It was also the first time she saw him near shirtless. It was distracting.</p>
<p>But getting nearly blown up is, apparently, not enough for him. He has to nearly die, tossed into a river from a thousand feet in the air. He’d actually be dead if not for the serum.

</p><p>It wakes her up, just a little bit. She needs to tell him. He’s barely awake, bleary eyed in his hospital bed when she walks in, even though she was planning on him being asleep.<br/>

She tells him anyway, because Natalia ‘Natasha’ Romanova is no coward.</p>
<p>He smiles at her drowsily, and since Steven ‘Cap’ Rogers is, in fact, annoying, says he already knows she loves him, says that he loves her too.

And because Steve Rogers is annoying, he rolls over and goes back to sleep.</p>
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